Pyro and Destruction 01

by - 2012/01/06 26 Comments Artwork, Production

Hello blender community! My name is Kjartan, I’m one of the new Mango-guys :)

This week we’ve been researching topics that we think will be relevant for Mango.
Sebastian did that awesome Digital MakeUp test, and I’m researching Pyro and
Destruction.

I’ve made two simple tests. One of Suzanne hitting and breaking a wall and the
other is just Suzanne blowing up. Typical blender-tests :)

I’m doing these to evaluate Blenders current tools. So I’m interested in knowing what you think of Blenders current destruction and pyro capabilities. How does it behave in real production shots? Show us examples of what you did to push the limits of Blender! And tell me how to make it better by leaving comments below. Thanks!

  1. Manuel L says:

    Have you seen the Phymec Fracture Tests? I think that it would be a great idea to also get him into the boat, or at least work further on what he works on.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIPu9_OGFgc
    About real production shots, i have seen some shots using explosions composited into actual footage, but i cant promise i will find them again.

  2. Light says:

    Suzanne = The suicide monkey!!!
    and
    I saw some Angry Birds meme there too. XD

    • Jon N/A says:

      Apperantlry I was slow too, Manuel L … Wanted to suggest making Angry Suzanne for the mango open-game project as a pun, Like I did with the Youtube video.

      • Light says:

        It will be better than Angry Bird. Everything cracks and blown to pieces and it is in 3D. Would boost Mango DVD pre-sale too.

        • Jon N/A says:

          :D Indeed…
          Though, Joking aside, I’d love to see the engine become capable of making 3D adventure games like Tell-Tale Games does…

  3. Hubberthus says:

    Poor Suzanne, always doing the dirty jobs… :)

    Crash some structures with many reflective/refractive/transparent surfaces cause that looks cool!

  4. belich says:

    is the smoke simulation sistem going to support animated objects in simulation for mango??? if smoke cant interact with flying debris its a bit useless for destruction

    • LswaN says:

      You should be able to set your debris to smoke collision to have it interact with the simulation. Though I’m not sure what you would do if the debris was already an emitter, maybe duplicate it and set the duplicate to collision.

      • belich says:

        objects can be set as collision object for smoke, but blender cant handle animated objects.
        this is an extract from the wiki (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Physics/Smoke) “Currently only static collision objects are supported.”

        and this this is how a big animated moving collision object look in the smoke simulation http://www.pasteall.org/pic/24034

        i mean debris usually are chunks of something flying around, if the chunks are small there is no problem but if they are bigger it could look weird and it would need lots of walkarround to achive the effect, maybe the case it wouldn appear on the whole producction

        • kjartan says:

          Yeah that’s true. I agree that it should be fixed, but for now you can get animated collisions by setting up force fields(in 3d view – Shift+A/ Force Field/ Force). Did you know that?

          • belich says:

            ill try to use force to deflect but didnt get anything convincing
            I got good results using Vortex, wind and turbulence, but i guess ill need more test.
            Anyways, nice results so far, lets hope that that static object issue will be fix and that voronoi fracture get some more development

            good luck

          • I made some tests with the force-field trick a while ago and got a sim going totally nuts :(

            I already sent some paper + code for animated colission and vorticles to Genscher. Maybe he can implement that.

  5. Shane says:

    Have you looked at particle disintegration? like in this tut http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD8qlNdEt6E

  6. Daniel Wray says:

    Some good tests.

    If you can, try and get the explosion to emit a thick black cloud that spreads out over the ground / low down in the air and dissipates slowly while having a brighter flash for a brief moment, and fire in the center and then have it climb further up, but only for a split second.

    The majority of the effect that should be seen is thick black smoke.

    of course if you’re going for a ‘Hollywood’ explosion then you’ll just need massive fireballs! :P

  7. rexprime says:

    looking impressive!

  8. Tungee says:

    You need this tool for Mango : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIPu9_OGFgc ….

  9. Joe says:

    Have you looked into KaiKostack’s Demolition feature which he is porting to 2.5/6?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_J7ak_IZXk

  10. MadMinstrel says:

    Wall breaking is cool, I’m sure it will look ok with some texturing. The explosion on the other hand looks original Star Wars era fake with the fiery explosion casting no light.

  11. pedro lara says:

    Hi guys, Good job.
    There is one particular feature for rigid body simulations that I´m particularly interested on: Including animated objects into the simulations. Also, it would be great a way to put initial conditions ( speed, rotation) for the simulated objects.

    I´ve heard that there is a chance to set it up with game logics, but I guess you need to get quite into the game engine to be able do that.
    It would be very helpfull in many scenes, as you would be able to simulate the main objects in a primary simulation and then add secondary animations, like debris and any other small parts, on top of the first simulation, using the baked animations of the primary objects. Good to coreograph simulations, or blend several simulations into a main one.

    I know maya already has those features. How difficult would it be to get that into blender ?

    Many thanks, and keep going with the great work !!

  12. Karlis says:

    I would say, that blender currently has absolutely no destruction tools.
    Fracture script is awful.. it’s slow, it crashes.. and it’s even a miracle if it even works on more complex models. And even if it works.. it doesn’t look like fracture should. Voronoi would be much better of course. And we have absolutely no control over fracturing.. where and what must be destroid.. force fields does not work in game engine too.. so even less control.. and I must say, that I just hate to go in game engine.. We should implement somehow these interactive phisics features to work in normal blender interface..

  13. Lamhaidh says:

    The explosions isn’t bad, but it’s missing the shockwave. If you watch the video I’ve linked to bellow you’ll see what I mean. Just after the bomb detonates the dirt etcetera is pushed out as the shockwave contacts the ground, in a perfect video you would also be able to see the refraction at the upper edges of the shockwave. For me the visualisation of the shockwave is one of the tell tale signs of a fake explosion, including Hollywood “Real” Explosions.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIlH_a5zV7E&feature=related

  14. scorpion81 says:

    Hello, i am currently working at a blender addon which shall allow
    to fracture objects and shoot them to pieces in the game engine.
    Basic stuff works but there are still some flaws.

    Take a look here:
    http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?247559-WIP-Blender-Destructability-Editor

    scorpion81

  15. Damian Smith says:

    Now that we have cycles which was a massive improvement in rendering I feel one of Blenders most lacking features is a good destruction engine. Coming from Maya and Max, I’ve used both Rayfire and Pulldownit in my production pipeline and they are extremely robust and adaptable. As its been said, the Fracture Script is slow (even with the new boolean library) and crashes far too much to be usable in a real production where time is of the essence. The smoke sim is fairly slow when using it at production resolutions. I would love to have something similar to TurbulenceFD in Blender. It’s fast, gives great looking results and isn’t overly difficult to use.